The Appetites of Girls (22 page)

“Let it ring. This is a good part,” Opal said.

But Ruth picked up the phone, afraid it might be someone’s parents, not wanting to cause concern. “Who? Setsu? Oh, yes, she’s here.”

And before I knew it, I found myself stuttering a surprised acceptance to James’s invitation to dinner at his home.

“Who’s James?” Ruth wanted to know.

I saw Fran’s blue eyes widen slightly, as if she were not sure she’d heard correctly.

“I didn’t expect it, Fran,” I said. “He talked with you all evening. I can call back—”

“Oh, God! Please!” She kicked at one of her leather clogs on the floor near the sofa and made a snapping noise with the gum in her mouth. “He really isn’t my type anyway.”

Aside from accompanying him to our senior prom, I had never had an official date with Gerald, my high school boyfriend, nor with the few boys I’d spent time with freshman year of college. Opal and I had gone out a few times with Clay and Andy—brothers in the class ahead of ours—but we had only played foosball and eaten cold pizza in the basement of their dorm. “We’d have had more fun if we’d stayed home and studied for Friday’s history test!” Opal had whispered to me the last evening as we stood to leave.

So I was not used to dressing for an occasion like my dinner with James. But Opal had a wardrobe of stylish clothes, so the morning of the dinner, I found her in her room. She was stretched on her stomach across
the white duvet cover on her bed, reading
Dubliners
. Her feet were up, her ankles crossed in cotton leggings that showed the long curves of her thighs.

“It’s amazing, Opal. You always look so glamorous,” I said, as part of my explanation for seeking her advice. I spoke quietly. Ruth’s room was beside Opal’s, and for some reason I did not want her to know my plans.

Opal rolled onto one elbow and blinked at the sun that was now slanting through her window and with the boredom of someone who’d heard the compliment too many times to care. I felt silly for having made the observation. “Maybe I’m interrupting you—”

“No. No, stay. I’ve been reading for hours anyway.” She stood, squaring her pretty shoulders, running her thumb and forefinger along the narrow line of her nose.

“Always start with your hair and face,” she said, seating me at her desk chair, adjusting the tilt of my head to suit her, then pulling a brush and a quilted bag of cosmetics from her top desk drawer. “Your face is like a canvas. Makeup can bring your features into focus, but the colors must work together.” She poked at my brows with tiny strokes from a brown pencil, lined my eyes, coated my lashes with quick, curling motions from her mascara wand. I sensed she would rather be doing something else, but this was work she nearly could complete with her eyes closed as she tipped my chin up and then down, turned my face to one side and then the other. I tried, in the meantime, to think of some topic to pass the time. “Are you going to any of the homecoming games this weekend? I know we all missed them last year, but I thought I would at least try to make the football game this time. I think Ruth is, too. If you want to come—”

“Not really my cup of tea,” she said, without looking up.

So, indicating her book, I asked if she still liked her James Joyce class, if after
Dubliners
they would be reading
Ulysses
, which I had attempted once in high school but failed to penetrate.

“You tackled it on your own? That was ambitious. Well, if you took the course, you’d understand it,” she said, though I wasn’t so sure.

Another lull in the conversation followed. I could think of nothing to say to interest her. I mentioned the small unframed watercolor to the left of her window. It had not been there the day before—a new addition to her mostly bare walls—the silhouette of a boy, all angular, spare lines, behind him black rocks and a slab of gray ocean. “Is that yours?”

“It’s not finished,” was all she said, making it clear she was no longer in the mood for chitchat. With deft fingers, she swirled creamy powder over my cheeks, dabbed gloss on my lips.

Opal approved of the dress and fitted, mandarin-collar coat I had considered but not of the flat shoes I had chosen to wear with them. “Why don’t you borrow these?” She took from her closet a pair of black patent leather sling-back heels. “You can keep them if you like. I really never wear them anymore.”

“Oh, thank you, Opal, but I couldn’t.”

“Of course you can.” She moved her hand wearily over her hair, and I knew I had tried her patience.

On the phone, James had given directions to his apartment, a ten-minute walk from campus, off Benefit Street, toward downtown Providence. He was renting the first story of a dilapidated blue Victorian house with a sagging veranda. Wet leaves coated the steps, and large chinks where the wood had rotted pocked the porch’s floorboards. I tiptoed to the doorbell, afraid of tripping or snapping a heel from Opal’s dress shoes.

James arrived at the front door in jeans, a braided leather belt, and a cantaloupe-orange shirt, its cuffs rolled back, its top two buttons unfastened. “Did you find the place without any trouble?” When I removed my coat, he smiled at my sleeveless silk frock and heels.

“Oh, yes, the directions were perfect,” I nodded, embarrassed by how ridiculously formal I now looked as I stood in his foyer, clutching the scented candle I had brought as a house gift.

James smiled, indicating my present. “Is that for me?”

“Yes, yes. Oh, I forgot—” As he took the candle from me, I could
feel, to my shame, a slight sticky dampness where my palms, despite the cool weather, had left perspiration on its plastic wrapping.

“Come in,” he offered. “I was just opening a bottle of Chardonnay, and I’ve ordered Indian food. There’s a great place in town that delivers.” He ushered me through a dim hallway to his kitchen. On one crowded counter lay a brown paper bag filled with takeout containers, beside it an uncorked bottle of wine. He poured a glass for me, then a slightly fuller one for himself. Through his kitchen I could see a small dining nook. James had already set the narrow table and had laid between our place mats a wreath of pinecones and autumn leaves, which I imagined he had gathered himself. He placed the candle I had brought in the center of the wreath and lit it.

In high school, though I had attended a number of my classmates’ late-night parties, I had drunk only partial glasses of alcohol, tiny sips, afraid the odor on my breath would give me away when I returned home, a habit I had broken only now and then during the last year. So the tall glass of wine James poured me began to make my lips tingle before I had even finished its contents. When I answered his questions, my words sounded garbled in my ears. So I was grateful that he seemed to know much about many subjects and that I could remain fairly silent as we settled into our chairs and began our meal. He understood things that were happening in places I knew only vaguely: revolts in African regions, ethnic wars in Eastern Europe, the names of diseases that ravaged lives in faraway towns and cities. He was familiar with the cuisines of many countries and the beverages that complemented them. He knew the history of Brown and its founders, the best places nearby for hiking, kayaking, antiquing. And when he began to speak of orchestras and musical events on campus, I still did nothing more than smile and nod, worried that if I opened my mouth, something foolish would tumble out.

Though James did most of the talking, he managed to consume large portions of food, many times more than what I had eaten. “You have a bird’s appetite,” he laughed, pointing with his fork to my partially
finished serving of lentils and spinach, the round of flatbread, the chicken curry remaining on my plate. “I guess that’s how you keep your petite figure.” He smiled broadly, and heat rose to my cheeks as I felt his eyes learning every inch of me.

•   •   •

A
lways my suitemates and I had spent our Saturdays together, but James began to invite me to his apartment Saturday afternoons and then evenings, and soon he began to call on weekdays, as well. More than once, when Francesca and Opal had other plans, I thought about inviting Ruth to join James and me for a walk into town or for lunch, knowing how she disliked eating in solitude, but I wondered if this would make her feel lonely, watching the two of us together, seeing that I had someone who was eager for my company. James asked for a copy of my course schedule so that he would know when I was free. Sometimes the telephone in my suite would ring just minutes after I’d returned from class. “Setsu, can I see you? Will you come over? I miss your face.”

Then Opal would roll her eyes as I put down the phone. “Didn’t you see him about five minutes ago?”

“Jesus, Setsu, aren’t you in charge of your own life?” Francesca would look up from her Baudelaire reading or from
Paris Match
. “James isn’t
God
, you know. His requests are not holy commandments!”

Until this point, I had always shared in their jokes, never before been the object of them. But I only laughed, too happy to care. My heart racing, I would throw my books on my bed, tear off my bulky sweater and jeans, and stand before my closet, searching for the clothes I thought James would find prettiest. Now and then, Opal would peek in, hesitating in my doorway, then giving some excuse about missing her hair clip or wondering if a piece of her mail had been mixed in with mine. But I knew why she’d really come. “You know, if you do this for yourself, it’s one thing.” She would gesture toward the spread of clothes on my bed.
“But if you’re doing all this—” And her chin would stiffen as if there was something unpleasant she did not wish to say.

“You all worry about me too much. It’s like living with three mother hens!” I teased, but I was beginning to feel annoyed by my suitemates’ preaching. I had seen the time Opal had taken before our evenings with Clay and Andy, as much as we had dismissed them. So if she’d had a boyfriend, certainly she would go to all the same measures.

I knew my roommates thought me silly, but it was
they
I felt sorry for, in their T-shirts and woolly socks, with no plans for the afternoon aside from watching Oprah Winfrey on our common room TV. I particularly pitied Ruth with the stack of molasses cookies she had taken from the Ratty, pushing them away as if she’d thought better of it, then breaking off new chunks. When she was partway through the stack, she would bring the remaining cookies into her lap, as if she thought none of us would notice that she gobbled down what would only make her larger. She seemed always to convince herself that an exercise walk down to the water with Opal later in the day would undo the damage. For some reason, her wordless watching, as I dashed from my room to the bathroom and back, was far worse than the others’ nagging.

I would brighten my lips with pink gloss and brush my hair facing the tabletop mirror I had placed on my desk, thirty strokes on either side of my part to bring out the silkiness, as Opal had taught me. Then I would stare into my black-brown eyes and whisper, “When did you become such a lucky girl, Setsu?”

•   •   •

A
s I was growing up, my father and Toru had paid little attention to the way I dressed. But James seemed to notice every detail of the clothes women wore. He critiqued the costumes of the actresses in old movies we rented and on mannequins in store windows when, on occasion, we drove to Boston. And he liked to give me gifts—diaphanous
scarves, an angora sweater, a pair of ivory-colored hair combs, stockings embroidered with a pattern of rosebuds. “You are so feminine, so dainty, Setsu. You
deserve
to be adorned in lovely things,” James insisted whenever I hesitated to accept one of these extravagances. He bought a silver bangle bracelet with a small turquoise stone and clasped it around my wrist. “Now you have something to remind you of how much I care,” he murmured in my ear. “Promise to wear it always.”

“Yes. Oh, thank you, yes.” And I did as he asked, never removing the bracelet, not even when I washed or slept. At unexpected moments, it would catch at me from the corner of my eye or its clasp would rub my skin, and I would shiver with happiness.

To increase our time together, as James suggested, I began to skip the stop at my suite before heading to his apartment after my last afternoon class. We met on his front porch, bundled in our barn jackets and scarves, and drank the flavored coffees he had picked up at Peaberry’s on Thayer Street. Seated on his wooden porch swing, we watched people hurrying along the sidewalk. Dog walkers, RISD undergrads in drab black and gray, their bulky canvases balanced awkwardly under their arms. Brown students, many of whom I recognized by face if not by name, some with their feet bare-toed in clunky, buckled sandals even in the late-fall weather—shoes we wouldn’t choose in any season, we agreed. Sometimes James would point out the girls whose hair hung half-tangled, who had allowed a coating of dark stubble to cover their legs. What exactly were they proving? Who would be impressed by their deliberate unattractiveness? His mouth curved as he slurped his Madagascar roast. Was it any surprise they walked alone? How fortunate we were, we felt, to have each other.

When we grew chilly, we moved inside for warm soup and baguettes. On several occasions, I offered to reciprocate, volunteering to serve a meal at my place instead. If my suitemates only had the chance to spend time with James beyond the quick interchanges when they ran into the two of us on campus, then certainly they would realize their concerns
had been misplaced. But always James refused, smiling as if my invitations amused him. “Wouldn’t you rather be here, where we can have privacy?” he would ask, leaning down to kiss the top of my head. “Here we can enjoy each other without interruption.”

So the regular meals I had shared with Fran and Ruth and Opal grew less frequent. And sometimes days would go by without my seeing any of them. It seemed strange at first, a little like my first nights at sleepaway camp, when I would wake feeling there was someplace I had forgotten I was meant to be. But this would not last. I would hear my roommates rustling sleepily in their sheets as I slipped out for my first early class or find notes they left on our memo board—
Setsu, your lab partner, Jillian, called. She has a question for you. Setsu, this is your week to clean the common room
—this followed by a lopsided smiley face. But after a time, their messages grew shorter and sloppier, as if they had tired of writing so many reminders in my absence.